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Sunday Links

The most comprehensive analysis yet of African genetic diversity was rightly hailed as "profoundly impressive" by Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future. By looking at 2,400 people from 113 African populations, Sarah Tishkoff has "done justice to the sheer scale of the genetic diversity within the African continent." The Scandal of the Week award goes to pharmaceutical company Merck and publishing house Elsevier, following news that the former paid the latter to produce six fake journals promoting their drugs. Janet Stemwedel considers the story and the difference between fake journals and just…

The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota

Somehow - and I don't know exactly how, you know how the internet is - I came across this odd but cute song by the ineffable Weird Al. It's an almost seven-minute(!) ode to the roadside attraction that is the titular biggest ball of twine. The twine ball actually exists, and lives in Darwin, Minnesota. Oh! What on earth would make a man decide to do that kind of thing! Oh! Windin' up twenty-one thousand, one hundred forty pounds of string! ... You know, I bet if we unravelled that sucker, It'd roll all the way down to Fargo, North Dakota 'Cause it's the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota…

Sunday Function

Here's a simple function that's not so often found in mathematical physics, but it's still a nice showpiece for exhibiting some interesting behavior: I've only plotted it for positive real x, because for x less than zero it starts spitting out complex numbers in a very unfriendly way. We're only considering it along the domain in which it's purely a real function. Just from the graph it's clear that this is a very fast-growing function. This isn't exactly a shock. 3^3 = 3x3x3 = 27, while 5^5 = 5x5x5x5x5 = 3125. Larger x produces much larger f(x) at an astonishing rate. But just what…

Jupiter, Bullets, Antimatter

There's been some discussion around the web of Jupiter apparently getting walloped by something, probably a comet. As with the more famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact, the result is a small dark blot in the clouds of the Jovian upper atmosphere. Small is a relative term - small spots on the surface can easily be as big as the Earth or bigger. Impacts are some of the most violent events in the solar system, and they release their energy entirely via conversion from kinetic energy. Here on earth people sometimes discuss the history of high energy weapons in terms of energy per weapon mass.…

The Road

Cormac McCarthy is with good reason widely considered to be among the finest living American writers. The literary scene has appreciated his work for some time; the general public (including myself, though I do a lot of reading) was first exposed to his work in the uncommonly faithful film adaptation of No Country for Old Men. Success breeds success in Hollywood, and McCarthy's most recent book The Road is being filmed. It's an unforgivingly grim and brutal book. A father and son are trying to survive in post-apocalyptic America. It's an uglier post-apocalypse than most. More or less…

The signal to noise problem in the climate crisis (and I'm not talking about data analysis)

The science machine continues to churn out depressing reports. The high-latitude permafrost contains more carbon than originally thought. The Arctic Ocean ice is even thinner than we feared. But my thoughts are dominated by the issues raised by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their new book, Unscientific America. I reviewed it Tuesday. Today I came across a fascinating interview with NASA climatologist and RealClimate.org founder Gavin Schmidt. It's long but worth reading. Among the highlights is his discussion of his efforts to bridge the cultural gap between scientists and society at…

The iron fertililty controversy

The German government has at least temporarily suspended an experiment that would see 20 tonnes of iron dust dumped into the ocean between Argentina and Antarctica in hopes of inducing plankton bloom that sucks up atmospheric CO2, according to Nature. First, says the government, you have to do an environmental impact study. But the very experiment itself is a study in environmental consequences. After all, if it works, then we might have at our disposal a simple way to draw down as much as 10% of the atmospheric carbon that's heating the planet. But wait. There's this international…

QIP 2009 Day 5 Liveblogging

The last day of QIP in Santa Fe. Also note that Joe has posted some nice notes on additivity on his blog: part I and part II. Oh, and QIP next year will be in Zurich, and QIP the year after next will be in Singapore. computing, conference, quantum Lluis Masanes, "Towards device-independent security in QKD" Paper: arXiv:0807.2158. I cam in late, so was a bit lost. But basically Lluis talked about secret key distillation under weaker assumptions than just assuming quantum theory. It seems that one an do secret key distillation from accessing the correlations that violate Bell inequalities…

To Woo Engineers

Hoisted from the comments, Rod says You guys are much more blunt than I usually am (except with students :-). You're also a lot more succinct. This particular paper may be wrong, and the authors should be told that, but: as the field grows, and more engineers join, there are going to be more people who start with naive positions. The goal is not to run them off, but to teach them, so they can help us build these things :-). To which, of course, I can only plead guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean no harm to engineers, that is for sure, especially considering the fact that I am surrounded by them…

Popular Science for Scientists?

Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette shares her thoughts on good science communication I've learned over the course of my varied career that the trick to all good science communication is being able to boil a complicated science story down to its most basic components -- the "core narrative" -- to which one can then add layers of detail and complexity to tailor the narrative to a wide range of target audiences. The main point I tried to get across in that first workshop is that this is not the same thing as the "dumbing down" epithet that many physicists like to fling at…

Off the Queue and Into the Brain

Books recently removed from the queue. "Mathematicians in Love" by Rudy Rucker, "An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets" by Donald Mackenzie, "Financial Calculus : An Introduction to Derivative Pricing" by Martin Baxter and Andrew Rennie. "109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos" by Jennet Conant. Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker Best described as a cross between a Philip K. Dick novel, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, and A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram, but not nearly as good as the first two. The story of a surfer mathematician…

"Space-Time" to Call Mystics on Their Misuse of Quantum Theory

Well it is certainly true that Mystics and quantum physicists speak the same language, that language most probably being Mandarin, English, or Hindi, but I'm guessing that's probably not what they meant by that title. I should have stopped reading at the title, but instead I actually scanned down the page. Oy, this one starts out bad: Quantum physicists have discovered to their amazement that, in the sub-atomic world, particles behave in very "unscientific and unpredictable" ways. Well actually what physicists have discovered is that particles behave in a totally scientific manner. Their…

Tasered Girl Sent To ICU

This is one of those sickening things that is href="http://www.pamshouseblend.com/tag/Tasers">all too common: href="http://www.cnjonline.com/news/tucumcari-34303-year-chief.html?wap=0"> href="http://www.cnjonline.com/news/tucumcari-34303-year-chief.html?wap=0">Tucumcari police chief Tasers 14-year-old Girl recovering after dart surgically removed from her head Friday, Jul 3 2009, 7:08 pm By Chelle Delaney: Freedom New Mexico A 14-year-old Tucumcari girl is recovering at an Albuquerque hospital after being shot in the head with a Taser dart by Tucumcari Police Chief Roger…

Getting Closer To Life's Dawn

Today scientists took another step towards creating the sort of simple life forms that may have been the first inhabitants of Earth. I wrote a feature for the June issue of Discover about this group, led by Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School. Szostak and his colleagues suspect that life started out not with DNA, RNA, and proteins, but just RNA. This primordial RNA not only carried life's genetic code, but also assembled new RNA molecules and did other biochemical jobs. Szostak and others have created conditions in their labs under which today's RNA can evolve into a form able to cary…

Squid in space

The last mission of the space shuttle will contain a student-initiated experiment: a collection of bobtail squid embryos will be launched into space. Which is cool, I suppose. I like squid, I like space, I like science, I like student research, let's just throw them all into one big tossed salad of extravagantly expensive tinkering. So why am I so disappointed? Because the experiment is so trivial and uninteresting. The squid Euprymna has a commensal relationship with the luminescent bacterium, Vibrio. Early in their development, special organs in the squid are colonized by the bacteria; the…

Dreams of a Eugenicist Planet?

Ask and ye shall receive. In a recent post on eugenics, I claimed that the connection between early 20th century genetics and early 21st century genetic engineering was weak. I asked if anyone thought I was wrong, and in no time I got a comment from Razib at Gene Expression. He suggests that I'm limited by conventional preconceptions, taking issue on both my points--first about the prospects of engineering intelligence and second about the prospects of a new species of engineered humans. I think he's got a stronger argument on the first point than the second. On the first point, Razib argues…

Lakoff: Sarah Palin Is a Master at Framing

George Lakoff weighs in with an assessment of what Sarah Palin can do for the McCain candidacy: The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind -- the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the…

For UW-Madison Readers: Talk on Framing and the Marketing Problem in Science

This blog has a ton of readers from the Madison, Wisconsin area. It's not surprising given that the university town is a major international hub for interest in science communication and public affairs. For Madison-area readers, tonight offers a great opportunity to discuss first hand many of the research principles and arguments that have been made here at Framing Science. My colleague Dietram Scheufele will be giving a presentation titled "Does Science Have a Marketing Problem? The Convergence of Science, Policy & Communication." Scheufele is a professor of Life Sciences Communication…

Biodiversity and literature: Why is it a "parliament of owls" and other such collective nouns?

I was listen to the radio as we were coming to the lab this morning, and one of the things that caught my ear was a quick mention of collective nouns. Now these are instances where there is a special and specific term that is coined for a group of things. Wiki describes it as follows: In linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects, where "objects" can be people, animals, emotions, inanimate things, concepts, or other things. For example, in the phrase "a pride of lions," pride is a collective noun. Then it kind of struck me that this sort of thing is most…

Green Roofs = Good Idea Too

"Construction of green roofs grew 30 percent in North America last year," reports the Chicago Tribune. (image credit: G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times) White roofs, green roofs, what can I say? My grandfather was a roofer. The architects and engineers have done a lot with green roofs here at UVA, especially as part of their ecoMOD project (noted in earlier posts). I've had the fortune to advise a few undergrad projects on this and, in great part through those students, learn about the feasibility, benefits, and challenges of green roofs. Here's the New York Times chiming in a few weeks…

Applying in academia: The job ad you've had nightmares about.

(And again with the back to school theme, and again with a piece from the SCQ - this one written by me) A UNIVERSITY JOB POSTING (OR BECOMING A PROFESSOR IS HARD THESE DAYS) This is a call for outstanding candidates to apply for a tenure track assistant professor position within the context of the Department of [subject name] at the [institution name]. The successful applicant is expected to work in areas of interest to current faculty members, to interact with related groups within our network and to have demonstrated ability in producing research material of excellent quality and interest.…

Science and Pinatas: A more natural combination than you would think...

So it would seem my last post on pinatas needs to be corrected on two fronts. Firstly, my piece at McSweeney's and its marriage of science and pinatas is not such a unique concept, and secondly, after doing a bit more homework, it's clear that the best blogging category to unite these two terms is "Life Science." (and not "Humanities and Social Sciences" as previously suggested. Why is this? Well, the term "pinata" (apologies for not including the little squiggle over the "n" - everytime I try, it comes out garbled) does crop up when you do literature searches. In fact, whilst the hits are…

Elsewhere on the Interweb (4/21/08)

Eddie Izzard eyes entering European Union politics. Well that would at least make things more interesting. So much excellence on NPR lately. Robert Krulwich explains why -- though radio and television communications have long been projected into space -- it is unlikely that aliens are listening. Short answer: the inverse square law causes the power of such transmission to decline below the microwave background radiation at about the edge of our solar system. Dutch engineers are building floating cities in Dubai. Reminds me a little of Operation Atlantis. (A libertarian movement to…

Expelling the log from one's own eye

David Bolinsky of XVIVIO has posted an open letter regarding the copyright infringement by Expelled. Interestingly, Mike Edmondson who was the animator for the movie has been scrubbed from the Expelled website and Dembksi has hinted that the producers had squirreled away money for copyright lawsuits. Sayeth Dembski: I’ve gotten to know the producers quite well. As far as I can tell, they made sure to budget for lawsuits. Also, I know for a fact that they have one of the best intellectual property attorneys in the business. I expect that the producers made their video close enough to the…

Piracy at ASU. Aaaar.

A couple of quick comments on this article: Arizona State University is among the nation's top offenders when it comes to students illegally downloading music, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The organization has sent ASU more than 300 notices identifying students involved with the illegal activity... ASU ranks among the country's 25 top university offenders regarding piracy. This is not really surprising. ASU has an enrollment in the region on 60,000 students making it currently the second largest university in the country. 300 is probably a relatively small…

Galbraith is Back

Barry Gewen from the NYTimes Paper Cuts blog on the reimergence of John Kenneth Galbraith: Friedman has no good explanation for "too big to fail," but it's at the heart of Galbraith's 1967 best seller, "The New Industrial State." Galbraith's basic argument is that there is an inevitability to economic development, that capital and technological requirements lead inescapably to the emergence of large, bureaucratic, oligopolistic firms. These firms have a high degree of control over prices and markets, and they don't seek the profit maximization the orthodox economists talk about, but stability…

PhD Complete Rates

Inside Higher Ed describes a study of complete rates for PhD students broken down by race/ethnicity, gender, whether the student is international or domestic, and by discipline. Here is the key chart: Cumulative Completion Rates for Students Starting Ph.D. Programs, 1992-3 Through 1994-5 Group By Year 5   By Year 6   By Year 7   By Year 8   By Year 9   By Year 10   Gender             --Male 24% 39% 48% 53% 57% 58% --Female 16% 30% 41% 47% 52% 55% Race/Ethnicity             --African American   16% 25% 34% 40% 44% 47…

Mobile phone microscopy

RESEARCHERS at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a microscope attachment which enables a standard mobile phone with a camera to be used for high-resolution clinical microscopy. Daniel Fletcher and his colleagues describe the CellScope in a paper published today in the open access journal PLoS One, and demonstrate that it can be used to capture high quality bright field images of the malaria parasite and sickle blood cells, as well as fluorescence images of cells infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. The device could potentially become an important tool for…

Beauty & the Brain

The new issue of Seed contains a short piece by me called Beauty and the Brain, about the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, which seeks to investigate the neural correlates of the appreciation of beauty in art. Neuroaesthetics was pioneered by Semir Zeki, who has been criticized as making extravagant claims about what can be achieved by the scientific study of such subjective phenomena. The work may seem fanciful, but it could eventually have direct clinical applications: we know, for example, that depressed patients have a diminished appreciation of beauty, and a new study shows that…

Mooney on Gore's Message and Impact

In a new regular column over at DesmogBlog, Chris Mooney elaborates on the arguments first offered here. We should applaud Gore, writes Chris, but we also need to draw on data and evidence in order to accurately evaluate his impact and consider what else needs to be done: However, there's one arena in which we seriously ought to criticize the Gore communications juggernaut--it just isn't the realm of scientific accuracy. Rather, the true issue is the one that Matthew Nisbet has been highlighting, and what I might term the "Gore paradox": Gore is our top mass media communicator on climate…

Paul Kurtz Responds to Sam Harris

The identity politics wrapped up in author Sam Harris' statements at a recent atheist conference here in Washington, DC has sparked a ton of discussion and debate. Paul Kurtz, chair of the Center for Inquiry and Editor of Free Inquiry, has circulated an important response via various email lists. Nathan Bupp, media relations director at CFI, asked that I post it here at Framing Science. Kurtz appears to agree with the proposal to drop the label "atheist" but argues strongly that other terms such as "secular humanist" are important and appropriate. These terms signal a philosophical…

When Big Business Gets Behind Cap and Trade, The Wall Street Journal Suddenly Re-Frames Its Position Around Standing Up for the Little Guy

Back in January, when a coalition of Big Industry CEOs and environmental groups got together to urge Congress and the President to pass "cap and trade" legislation on global warming pollutants, a sudden crack appeared in the long standing conservative opposition to major policy action on the problem. Indeed, with CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Peter A. Darbee of PG&E offering up a plan that would lead to a 20 to 40 percent reduction in current levels of global warming pollutants by 2050, it was time for long time opponents of action to regroup and reassess their…

SO WHY DOESN'T INCONVENIENT TRUTH PROVIDE MORE POLICY PROPOSALS?: Director Says Goal Was to Persuade and Mobilize; Policy Proposals Would Constitute a Second Film

One of the critiques of Inconvenient Truth that has emerged is that Gore spends a lot of time warning viewers about global warming, but strays from actually providing concrete suggestions for policy action. Some have argued that this reflects his eye on the Presidential race in 2008, and that candidate Gore wants to avoid locking himself into costly policy proposals that might lose certain key constituencies or that might be used as fodder by opponents. But in an extensive interview, Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim tells a different side. The main goal of the movie was to…

Imagining My Homicidal Liver

Parasitoid wasps (or rather, one group of them called the Ichneumonidae) are the subject of one of Charles Darwin's most famous quotations: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars." Scientists have learned a lot more about parasitoid wasps since Darwin wrote about them in 1860, and their elegant viciousness is now even more staggering to behold. Not only do they devour their hosts alive from the inside out, but they also manipulate the…

What I'm Reading Today on ScienceBlogs

I've got several imminent deadlines which means that my blog time is limited just now. However, there have been a few interesting posts that I thought I'd refer you to. Orac has a review of a new study showing that publication bias can result in some animal research studies. So, basically, all we can conclude from this study is that, for one intervention and one type of animal model, there appears to be publication bias, the effect of which can only be very roughly estimated and which varies depending upon which intervention is studied. It is unknown whether publication bias exists for…

Ray Comfort is a Half-Wit and a Libelous Scalawag

Now that his plan has backfired drastically (his own website has removed the link to his "Introduction" of Darwin's book) and more people were offended by his distortions than anything else, let me briefly point out some useful information. Comfort makes the following assertions in his introduction: Adolf Hitler took Darwin's evolutionary philosophy to its logical conclusions [and] the legacy of Darwin's theory can be seen in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion. As the National Center for Science Education has pointed out: This is simply hyperbole on Comfort's part.…

Does Lyme disease make you shoot people?

A pastor in Illinois was shot and killed over the weekend. A similar tragedy happened in my community many years ago. Religious leaders are very public figures and have an emotional connection with members of their communities, so I suppose it's not so strange that they should be targets. Many of the cases I have read about over the years involved a mentally ill assailant, as it appears the Illinois case did. Mental illness doesn't usually lead to violence, but one can certainly imagine how a particularly disturbing delusion could lead someone to violence. The American mental health…

Experimental Biology 2016 - Day 4

Still going strong...here are the highlights from several sessions held on Day 4: Drawing of Lake Whitefish by William Converse Kendall - Kendall, William Converse, b. (1909) Fishes of the Connecticut Lakes and Neighboring Waters, with Notes on the Plankton Environment, Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries, 1906-1907, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 39 Fig.1, Public Domain John Eme (California State University, San Marcos) presented data testing the effects of varying temperatures mimicking overwintering conditions on embryonic development of Lake whitefish. He found…

Trace component of caramel food coloring and burnt sugar helps treat muscular dystrophy

Image of creme brulee by Moniza, from www.allrecipes.com Researchers at the University of Washington have shown that a trace component in burnt sugar (like the creme brulee above) and Caramel Colour III (used to color dark beers, brown sugar, etc) has been shown to help regenerate muscles in both fruit fly and mouse models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Drs. Morayma Reyes (Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine) and Hannele Ruohola-Baker (Professor of Biochemistry; Associate Director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine) studied mouse models that were missing a…

Giving myself credit for being myself

Not too long ago, I had lunch with one of my mentors, a senior woman in a different department who has been just an incredible resource and sounding board for me over the years. Meeting with this woman always makes me feel better: she boosts my confidence when it needs boosting, and is really good at coming up with strategies to deal with the various things I've had to deal with over the years. And lunch on this particular day was no exception. One of the many things that I've been beating myself up over lately is "difference". Namely, the difference between me and my departmental…

The Informationist: AM 1

I'm here at The Informationist: Collaboration between scientists and librarians to support informatics research at the Embassy Suites in DC. It's sponsored by Elsevier as part of their Research Connect series. (these are stream of consciousness) Tonna - VP North Am, Academic & Gov't. Research productivity metrics more important for funding decisions. Data for institute and gov't research funding decisions. Their goals: increase productivity (doing science & getting grants), provide data for making funding decisions. Increased use of ejournals correlates with increased publication and…

Article downloads as a measure of …

quality? popularity? utility? I'm pretty sure I've blogged about MESUR (a research project that studied how usage statistics - as we call them in the industry - can be a metric like citations are). I've also blogged a discussion by MJ Kurtz in which he discusses how usage is very much like citations, if offset.  Some researchers including some bibliometricians have issues with using usage for some pretty good reasons: if citations can be gamed then click fraud anyone? if we don't know what citations mean, then what can we say about downloads at all? what is actually counted? pdf downloads?…

Keck AO Observations: Io Volcanism - "Mornes plaines"

By Dr. Franck Marchis Planetary Astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute I'd like to share the first of two blogs on observations of Io that we did using the Keck telescope and its Adaptive Optics (AO) system. Similar to last year, my summer is busy with the REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students of the SETI Institute. I will write a specific post on two students who are working with me and their project in a few days. I obtained telescope time at the end of June 2010 with the W.M. Keck II telescope and its Adaptive Optics system…

Kleck's DGU numbers

Steve D. Fischer writes: While you're at it, keep in mind that one of Pim's favorite scientists (i.e. one who also hates guns), Colin Loftin, has said publically that the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) survey - the "Gold Standard" (guffaw) of surveys - undercounts spousal abuses by as much as a factor of 12, and rapes by a factor of 33. Err, no. He said it might undercount them by this much. Criminologists do agree that NCVS significantly undercounts non-stranger crimes. It does not follow that it undercounts stranger crimes. Since the uses reported to Kleck were mostly…

The Giant's Shoulders #13 is Up

The World's Fair is recreated in all it's glory! Skulls in the Stars is currently hosting the thirteenth installment of the History of Science Blog Carnival. There are some amazing pieces in this edition so head on over right now and check them out. GG was also kind enough to include my post The Grassroots of Scientific Revolution. Some of the most interesting pieces I read in this edition include: Brian at Laelaps discusses the controversy of the cuttlefish: Meyranx and Laurencet's paper played right into Geoffroy's hands. Even though they had not intended on refuting Cuvier, the…

Scientia Pro Publica #7

Scientia Pro Publica #7 is now up at Greg Laden's Blog. This is the crème brûlée of science carnivals and includes the best writing from the past two months. Greg was kind enough to include my recent post The Struggle for Coexistence. There are some excellent posts in this edition, so click on over and check them out. Some of the ones I found particularly interesting in this edition include: A Primate of Modern Aspect looks at the evolution of a malaria resistance gene in wild primates, a paper co-authored by my former professor Susan Alberts: This is an important step forward in the…

File under "awesome experiments I wish I had thought of"

I love it when I stumble upon a study that I really wish I'd thought of. I'm not a jealous researcher - I don't wish I'd sequenced the GFP gene before everyone so that I got a Nobel Prize instead. I don't wish I'd made some significant breakthrough in my field. No, I wish I'd thought of this first: Bees on Cocaine. I mean, seriously? Who thinks of these things? Honey Bee... hitting the nose candy? Anyhow, a group of scientists (including a team of very lucky undergraduates) looked at how honey bees reacted to being fed a little Big C. Apparently, there was speculation previously that…

Bush hoping to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act

Like every leader on their way out the door, Bush hopes to make a few more last-minute changes before we get our much-needed new president. One of his maleficent plans is to gut the Endangered Species Act despite active, loud protesting from the environmental community. As if his general lack of care (adding only 10 species a year to the act - even daddy Bush added close to 60 a year), trimmings and changes in 2004 weren't enough, Bush has put the Endangered Species in his sights yet again. His plans - to remove the clause that requires projects to receive scientific review of environmental…

Are you Psychic? You've got two years left to proove it for a million dollars

Unsurprisingly the James Randi Educational Foundation has had a problem giving away their million dollar prize to someone who could demonstrate scientifically under controlled circumstances that they could perform some sort of paranormal ability. They aren't even that specific on what kind of paranormal ability it has to be. It could be ESP, telekinesis, talking to ghosts, oh hell even showing the existence of a ghost - no talking needed. Many have stepped up, usually confused individuals, but none have been able to claim the prize. For some strange reason no big name has stepped up to…

Fishing Down the Food Web Turns 10!

In 1998, Pauly et al. published their seminal paper in Science on Fishing Down Marine Food Webs (FDFW). The paper has been cited nearly 1000 times and today it turns 10 years old. The paper has been influential, namely in establishing the mean trophic level of fisheries as a tool for measuring the health of the oceans. In 2000, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)--a treaty to sustain biodiversity adopted by every country except the U.S.--mandated that each country report on its the change in mean trophic level over time as an indicator of ocean health. How did they do the study?…